| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2025 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Electrode Technology for Aluminum Production
|
| Presentation Title |
Managing Bake Furnace Relines to Optimize Fire Startup |
| Author(s) |
Daniel Reichelson, Jonathan Reichelson |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Daniel Reichelson |
| Abstract Scope |
In Quebec, labor rates are high and labor availability is low, making bake furnace relines a difficult challenge for smelters to manage. A lack of qualified bricklayers mean that smelters often need to wait their turn to reline in order to avoid competition, with few contractors able to meet the safety, quality and schedule requirements. Smelters often operate their bake furnaces beyond their useful life, leading to high energy consumption, lower anode quality and refractory maintenance that can no longer keep up. Moreover, most smelters have managed to creep amperage in their lifetime, thus reducing overcapacity in the furnaces, obliging them to purchase anodes externally to maintain potline production.
Given the step-by-step nature of bake furnace relines, it is possible to optimize the schedule by developing the critical path, thereby reducing the period over which the smelter is not producing anodes. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: Light Metals |
| Keywords |
Process Technology, Aluminum, |